Dan Rather: 'Trifecta' for the GOP

Veteran newsman Dan Rather said Thursday he doesn’t think the trio of controversies surrounding President Barack Obama are “in the same cosmos” as Watergate, but imagines that the GOP is “slapping high five” behind closed doors.

“Those who compare it to Watergate, the Republicans, are always eager to jump on almost anything and say, ‘Well, it’s like Watergate,’” Rather said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “We’re not anywhere in the same cosmos as that. Keep in mind, with Watergate, while using the Internal Revenue Service to punish one’s opponents came directly from the president himself. That’s a fact. Now, in this case, we don’t even know whether the president was aware that this was happening.”

Story Continued Below

While Republican rhetoric might be overheated, Rather said, their political edge is real.

“This is advantage Republicans,” he continued. “The Republicans must be slapping high five behind closed doors because they have three things going for them. One: Their No. 1 agenda item is to stop President Obama from accomplishing anything in his second term. This aids that. Number two: , they have their eye on the next congressional elections in 2014. Many Republicans in Congress were getting estranged from the tea party and now they have solidarity with the tea party moving toward that election. And by the way, with the Benghazi thing, they managed to damage Hillary Clinton’s chances of not only getting the presidency in ’16, but also getting the nomination.”

Rather summed it up: “It’s a trifecta for them.”

The former CBS newsman advised the GOP to focus on the IRS scandal as opposed to ongoing controversies surrounding the Justice Department’s seizure of Associated Press phone records or the Benghazi attack.

“The IRS story by far has the most legs,” Rather said. “I’m not sure that either of the other two will last all that long. Both are fairly important but the Internal Revenue Service story will last quite a long while, depending on what the president does and doesn’t do.”